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19 - The EU and the Narrative of Prosperity

from Prosperity and Solidarity

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 October 2023

By
Claudia Hiepel
Edited by
Mathieu Segers  and
Steven Van Hecke
Mathieu Segers
Affiliation:
Universiteit Maastricht, Netherlands
Steven Van Hecke
Affiliation:
Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium
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Summary

Since its very beginnings, a central narrative of European integration has been that only a form of profound cooperation between the European states will allow the promotion of prosperity and social security. The narrative of prosperity is one of the oldest and most constant meta-arguments of regional European integration. The Schuman Declaration of 9 May 1950 already stated that the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) would contribute to ‘raising living standards’.1 In the European Union’s (EU’s) self-portrayal, prosperity, growth and employment are still among its hardly questioned and fundamental goals, as former President of the Commission Emanuel Barroso put it: ‘Today the raison d’être of our Union is also the same that was there sixty years ago: peace, democracy, to be freed from fears, mistrust and divisions, to share security, stability and prosperity.’

Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge History of the European Union , pp. 540 - 564
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2023

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References

Recommended Reading

Berend, I. T. An Economic History of Twentieth-Century Europe: Economic Regimes from Laissez-Faire to Globalization (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2016).Google Scholar
Eichengreen, B. The European Economy since 1945: Coordinated Capitalism and Beyond (Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press, 2007).Google Scholar
Eichengreen, B. and Boltho, A.. ‘The Economic Impact of European Integration’, in Broadberry, S. and O’Rourke, K. H. (eds.), The Cambridge Economic History of Modern Europe, vol. ii: 1870 to the Present (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2010), pp. 267–95.Google Scholar
Kaelble, H. A Social History of Europe, 1945–2000: Recovery and Transformation after Two World Wars (New York, NY and Oxford, Berghahn, 2013).Google Scholar
Patel, K. K. Project Europe: A History (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2020).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Warlouzet, L. Governing Europe in a Globalizing World: Neoliberalism and Its Alternatives Following the 1973 Oil Crisis (London, Routledge, 2018).Google Scholar

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